Bright side - you were likely high all the time because the fungus that ate your butt (and a lot of other organs) was loaded with psilocybin.

oH yes, and an amphetamine too.

Quote:

"Despite their horrific injuries, males become hyperactive and hypersexual. They frenetically try to mate with anything they can find, including with other males. They'll even mimic the wing-flicking signals of females to lure males toward them. None of this does them any good-their genitals have either been devoured by the fungus or have fallen off with the rest of their butts."

Landrace of corn grown by communities in southern Mexico for hundreds of years have symbiotic relationship with a nitrogen fixing bacteria that lives in a gel produced by fingerlike rootlets growing on the corn stems. The corn gets 26 to 82% of its nitrogen needs from this partnership.

This trait has not been observed in grasses before, but turns our to be present in corn's ancestor, teosinte.

The plight of the North Atlantic right whale, a species with just 450 individuals left in its population, just got even worse.

After a disastrous 2017, in which at least 17 North Atlantic right whale deaths were recorded, it has emerged that no newborn calves have been sighted since.

...

Although a few fishing ropes might not seem like a big deal to some, they are surprisingly heavy, tough pieces of material. And when wrapped around a whale’s body, they cause significant mobility issues and increase drag when swimming through the water.

Recently, whale rescuers have been trying to disentangle a well known female North Atlantic right whale, nicknamed Kleenex, that had been entangled for at least four years.

Michael Moore at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has studied the long-term effects of such episodes.

“For a female right whale, what can you give up if you’re running out of energy? The answer is you don’t get pregnant,” he says.

Moore and other whale scientists generally agree: the most significant boost we can give to this species is to reduce the likelihood of entanglements, get out of their way, and hope that they have enough energy to breed.

__________________spruce: apart from the weird tuft of white hair she's still a beautiful person

The article really overstates the objections of fishermen, though - most fishers have been very positive about protecting the whales and are just as horrified as everyone else regarding the 17 deaths last year.

Also, NS and NB fishermen have been making huge efforts for the past 9 years to retrieve 'ghost fishing' gear:

Quote:

Fishermen use custom grapples to haul up the heavy snarls.
She said they consider it a challenge to find and remove the ghost gear from the ocean — not just because it helps protect the whales and save their own gear from getting tangled, but also because it can go on to serve a new purpose.

The plight of the North Atlantic right whale, a species with just 450 individuals left in its population, just got even worse.

After a disastrous 2017, in which at least 17 North Atlantic right whale deaths were recorded, it has emerged that no newborn calves have been sighted since.

...

Although a few fishing ropes might not seem like a big deal to some, they are surprisingly heavy, tough pieces of material. And when wrapped around a whale’s body, they cause significant mobility issues and increase drag when swimming through the water.

Recently, whale rescuers have been trying to disentangle a well known female North Atlantic right whale, nicknamed Kleenex, that had been entangled for at least four years.

Michael Moore at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has studied the long-term effects of such episodes.

“For a female right whale, what can you give up if you’re running out of energy? The answer is you don’t get pregnant,” he says.

Moore and other whale scientists generally agree: the most significant boost we can give to this species is to reduce the likelihood of entanglements, get out of their way, and hope that they have enough energy to breed.

I remember seeing one of these when we were out on the Ocean with my dad. My brother and I took pictures of it (fighting over the camera cause we were like 10 and 8) and then had to ...get this...WAIT FOR THEM TO BE DEVELOPED before going to ...AN ENCYCLOPEDIA at the LIBRARY to figure out what kind of whale it was.

Canadian researchers have discovered a new kind of organism that's so different from other living things that it doesn't fit into the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, or any other kingdom used to classify known organisms.
Two species of the microscopic organisms, called hemimastigotes, were found in dirt collected on a whim during a hike in Nova Scotia by Dalhousie University graduate student Yana Eglit.

A genetic analysis shows they're more different from other organisms than animals and fungi (which are in different kingdoms) are from each other, representing a completely new part of the tree of life, Eglit and her colleagues report this week in the journal Nature.
"They represent a major branch… that we didn't know we were missing," said Dalhousie biology professor Alastair Simpson, Eglit's supervisor and co-author of the new study.